Makch 4, 1904.] 



SCIENCE. 



367 



AERONAUTICS. 



The program for Wednesday morning 

 was made up of a series of papers on prob- 

 lems connected with aeronautics. Pro- 

 fessor J. Burkitt Webb, of Stevens Insti- 

 tute, Hoboken, N. J., presented two papers. 

 One was on ' The Flying Machine Problem, ' 

 in which he showed among other things that 

 'for rapid flight a considerable altitude is 

 favorable.' The second one was on 'Prac- 

 tical Artificial Flight. ' The author stated 

 that the inventor should aim for the most 

 practical results and should attack the main 

 difSculties at the start. To this end, he 

 suggested that the question of motive power 

 be eliminated, and that power be supplied 

 from a trolley or from an overhead source, 

 and that the endeavor should be to develop 

 a machine which can slowly and surely rise 

 from the ground and as slowly and safely 

 descend again; and which should be con- 

 trolled by an automatic balancing device. 



Mr. A. Lawrence Roteh, director of the 

 Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory, Hyde 

 Park, Mass., read a most interesting paper, 

 which was illustrated by the stereopticon, 

 descriptive of the 'Exploration of the At- 

 mosphere as Practised with Kites at the 

 Blue Hill Observatory since 1894.' The 

 methods employed and the results obtained 

 are in part described in the appendix of 

 the 'Smithsonian Report' of 1900, and the 

 later technical details will be published in 

 the Annals of Harvard College Observa- 

 tory, Part III. of Volume XLIII. 



'The Aeronautical Contests at the 

 World's Fair, St. Louis, 1904,' were out- 

 lined and discussed in three papers pre- 

 sented by Professor Calvin M. Woodward, 

 Washington University, St. Louis, Mo., Mr. 

 A. Lawrence Rotch, director of Blue Hill 

 Meteorological Observatory, Hyde Park, 

 Mass., and Mr. Willard A. Smith, chief of 

 the transportation exhibits, and in charge 

 of the Department of Aeronautics, of the 



St. Loixis World's Fair. All three gentle- 

 men are members of the committee having 

 the subject in charge. Professor Wood- 

 ward introduced the subject. Mr. Roteh 

 described and illustrated with the lantern 

 the most successful dirigible balloons and 

 flying machines, some of which are likely 

 to be tried at St. Louis, and discussed the 

 regulations for these experiments as drawn 

 up by the committee. Mr. Smith con- 

 tinued the subject, discussing it in detail, 

 and describing the facilities which would 

 be offered to contestants for inflating their 

 balloons with hydrogen gas, 97 per cent, 

 pure, made by a new English process, 

 which is guaranteed to deliver 25,000 cubic 

 feet of hydrogen for the combustion of one 

 ton of slack coal. The method of genera- 

 tion, it was stated, will consist of. the dis- 

 sociation of steam by incandescent iron 

 shavings, and the reviviflcation of the oxide 

 of iron so formed by producer gas. 



The last paper of the morning was by 

 Mr. Octave Chanute, on 'Aerial Naviga- 

 tion, ' and was a most able one. After call- 

 ing attention to two probable solutions of 

 the problem, he described what has been 

 accomplished with balloons and flying ma- 

 chines, the evolution and limitations of 

 such apparatus, their limited uses, and dis- 

 cussed the prospect of any one winning the 

 prize offered by the World's Fair Commis- 

 sion. It is published in the March Popular 

 Science Monthly. The series of papers be- 

 ing by noted specialists of high scientific 

 attainments were greatly enjoyed by all 

 those who availed themselves of the priv- 

 ilege of hearing them. 



THE HYDROLOGY OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER. 



The Wednesday evening program in- 

 cluded in its scope the entire Mississippi 

 River Valley, beginning with a paper by 

 Professor C. W. Hall, of the University of 

 Minnesota, at Minneapolis, Minn., on 'The 

 Stream Flow of the Upper Mississippi 



